Olive Schreiner's
The Story of an African Farm

Chapter 1.I. Shadows From Child-Life.

The Watch.

The full African moon poured down its light from the blue sky into the
wide, lonely plain. The dry, sandy earth, with its coating of stunted
karoo bushes a few inches high, the low hills that skirted the plain, the
milk-bushes with their long finger-like leaves, all were touched by a weird
and an almost oppressive beauty as they lay in the white light.

In one spot only was the solemn monotony of the plain broken. Near the
centre a small solitary kopje rose. Alone it lay there, a heap of round
ironstones piled one upon another, as over some giant's grave. Here and
there a few tufts of grass or small succulent plants had sprung up among
its stones, and on the very summit a clump of prickly-pears lifted their
thorny arms, and reflected, as from mirrors, the moonlight on their broad
fleshy leaves. At the foot of the kopje lay the homestead. First, the
stone-walled sheep kraals and Kaffer huts; beyond them the dwelling-house–
a square, red-brick building with thatched roof. Even on its bare red
walls, and the wooden ladder that led up to the loft, the moonlight cast a
kind of dreamy beauty, and quite etherealized the low brick wall that ran
before the house, and which inclosed a bare patch of sand and two
straggling sunflowers. On the zinc roof of the great open wagon-house, on
the roofs of the outbuildings that jutted from its side, the moonlight
glinted with a quite peculiar brightness, till it seemed that every rib in
the metal was of burnished silver.

Sleep ruled everywhere, and the homestead was not less quiet than the
solitary plain.

In the farmhouse, on her great wooden bedstead, Tant Sannie, the Boer-
woman, rolled heavily in her sleep.

She had gone to bed, as she always did, in her clothes, and the night was
warm and the room close, and she dreamed bad dreams. Not of the ghosts and
devils that so haunted her waking thoughts; not of her second husband the
consumptive Englishman, whose grave lay away beyond the ostrich-camps, nor
of her first, the young Boer; but only of the sheep's trotters she had
eaten for supper that night. She dreamed that one stuck fast in her
throat, and she rolled her huge form from side to side, and snorted
horribly.

In the next room, where the maid had forgotten to close the shutter, the
white moonlight fell in in a flood, and made it light as day. There were
two small beds against the wall. In one lay a yellow-haired child, with a
low forehead and a face of freckles; but the loving moonlight hid defects
here as elsewhere, and showed only the innocent face of a child in its
first sweet sleep.

The figure in the companion bed belonged of right to the moonlight, for it
was of quite elfin-like beauty. The child had dropped her cover on the
floor, and the moonlight looked in at the naked little limbs. Presently
she opened her eyes and looked at the moonlight that was bathing her.

"Em!" she called to the sleeper in the other bed; but received no answer.
Then she drew the cover from the floor, turned her pillow, and pulling the
sheet over her head, went to sleep again.

Only in one of the outbuildings that jutted from the wagon-house there was
some one who was not asleep.

The room was dark; door and shutter were closed; not a ray of light entered
anywhere. The German overseer, to whom the room belonged, lay sleeping
soundly on his bed in the corner, his great arms folded, and his bushy grey
and black beard rising and falling on his breast. But one in the room was
not asleep. Two large eyes looked about in the darkness, and two small
hands were smoothing the patchwork quilt. The boy, who slept on a box
under the window, had just awakened from his first sleep. He drew the
quilt up to his chin, so that little peered above it but a great head of
silky black curls and the two black eyes. He stared about in the darkness.
Nothing was visible, not even the outline of one worm-eaten rafter, nor of
the deal table, on which lay the Bible from which his father had read
before they went to bed. No one could tell where the toolbox was, and
where the fireplace. There was something very impressive to the child in
the complete darkness.

At the head of his father's bed hung a great silver hunting watch. It
ticked loudly. The boy listened to it, and began mechanically to count.
Tick–tick–one, two, three, four! He lost count presently, and only
listened. Tick–tick–tick–tick!

It never waited; it went on inexorably; and every time it ticked a man
died! He raised himself a little on his elbow and listened. He wished it
would leave off.

How many times had it ticked since he came to lie down? A thousand times,
a million times, perhaps.

He tried to count again, and sat up to listen better.

"Dying, dying, dying!" said the watch; "dying, dying, dying!"

He heard it distinctly. Where were they going to, all those people?

He lay down quickly, and pulled the cover up over his head: but presently
the silky curls reappeared.

"Dying, dying, dying!" said the watch; "dying, dying, dying!"

He thought of the words his father had read that evening–"For wide is the
gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction and many there be
which go in thereat."

"Many, many, many!" said the watch.

"Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, that leadeth unto life,
and few there be that find it."

"Few, few, few!" said the watch.

The boy lay with his eyes wide open. He saw before him a long stream of
people, a great dark multitude, that moved in one direction; then they came
to the dark edge of the world and went over. He saw them passing on before
him, and there was nothing that could stop them. He thought of how that
stream had rolled on through all the long ages of the past–how the old
Greeks and Romans had gone over; the countless millions of China and India,
they were going over now. Since he had come to bed, how many had gone!

And the watch said, "Eternity, eternity, eternity!"

"Stop them! stop them!" cried the child.

And all the while the watch kept ticking on; just like God's will, that
never changes or alters, you may do what you please.

Great beads of perspiration stood on the boy's forehead. He climbed out of
bed and lay with his face turned to the mud floor.

"Oh, God, God! save them!" he cried in agony. "Only some, only a few!
Only for each moment I am praying here one!" He folded his little hands
upon his head. "God! God! save them!"

He grovelled on the floor.

Oh, the long, long ages of the past, in which they had gone over! Oh, the
long, long future, in which they would pass away! Oh, God! the long, long,
long eternity, which has no end!

The child wept, and crept closer to the ground.

...

The Sacrifice.

The farm by daylight was not as the farm by moonlight. The plain was a
weary flat of loose red sand, sparsely covered by dry karoo bushes, that
cracked beneath the tread like tinder, and showed the red earth everywhere.
Here and there a milk-bush lifted its pale-coloured rods, and in every
direction the ants and beetles ran about in the blazing sand. The red
walls of the farmhouse, the zinc roofs of the outbuildings, the stone walls
of the kraals, all reflected the fierce sunlight, till the eye ached and
blenched. No tree or shrub was to be seen far or near. The two sunflowers
that stood before the door, out-stared by the sun, drooped their brazen
faces to the sand; and the little cicada-like insects cried aloud among the
stones of the kopje.

The Boer-woman, seen by daylight, was even less lovely than when, in bed,
she rolled and dreamed. She sat on a chair in the great front room, with
her feet on a wooden stove, and wiped her flat face with the corner of her
apron, and drank coffee, and in Cape Dutch swore that the beloved weather
was damned. Less lovely, too, by daylight was the dead Englishman's child,
her little stepdaughter, upon whose freckles and low, wrinkled forehead the
sunlight had no mercy.

"Lyndall," the child said to her little orphan cousin, who sat with her on
the floor threading beads, "how is it your beads never fall off your
needle?"

"I try," said the little one gravely, moistening her tiny finger. "That is
why."

The overseer, seen by daylight, was a huge German, wearing a shabby suit,
and with a childish habit of rubbing his hands and nodding his head
prodigiously when pleased at anything. He stood out at the kraals in the
blazing sun, explaining to two Kaffer boys the approaching end of the
world. The boys, as they cut the cakes of dung, winked at each other, and
worked as slowly as they possibly could; but the German never saw it.

Away, beyond the kopje, Waldo his son herded the ewes and lambs–a small
and dusty herd–powdered all over from head to foot with red sand, wearing
a ragged coat and shoes of undressed leather, through whose holes the toes
looked out. His hat was too large, and had sunk down to his eyes,
concealing completely the silky black curls. It was a curious small
figure. His flock gave him little trouble. It was too hot for them to
move far; they gathered round every little milk-bush, as though they hoped
to find shade, and stood there motionless in clumps. He himself crept
under a shelving rock that lay at the foot of the kopje, stretched himself
on his stomach, and waved his dilapidated little shoes in the air.

Soon, from the blue bag where he kept his dinner, he produced a fragment of
slate, an arithmetic, and a pencil. Proceeding to put down a sum with
solemn and earnest demeanour, he began to add it up aloud: "Six and two is
eight–and four is twelve–and two is fourteen–and four is eighteen."
Here he paused. "And four is eighteen–and–four–is–eighteen." The last
was very much drawled. Slowly the pencil slipped from his fingers, and the
slate followed it into the sand. For a while he lay motionless, then began
muttering to himself, folded his little arms, laid his head down upon them,
and might have been asleep, but for the muttering sound that from time to
time proceeded from him. A curious old ewe came to sniff at him; but it
was long before he raised his head. When he did, he looked at the far-off
hills with his heavy eyes.

"Ye shall receive–ye shall receive–shall, shall, shall," he muttered.

He sat up then. Slowly the dulness and heaviness melted from his face; it
became radiant. Midday had come now, and the sun's rays were poured down
vertically; the earth throbbed before the eye.

The boy stood up quickly, and cleared a small space from the bushes which
covered it. Looking carefully, he found twelve small stones of somewhat
the same size; kneeling down, he arranged them carefully on the cleared
space in a square pile, in shape like an altar. Then he walked to the bag
where his dinner was kept; in it was a mutton chop and a large slice of
brown bread. The boy took them out and turned the bread over in his hand,
deeply considering it. Finally he threw it away and walked to the altar
with the meat, and laid it down on the stones. Close by in the red sand he
knelt down. Sure, never since the beginning of the world was there so
ragged and so small a priest. He took off his great hat and placed it
solemnly on the ground, then closed his eyes and folded his hands. He
prayed aloud:

"Oh, God, my Father, I have made Thee a sacrifice. I have only twopence,
so I cannot buy a lamb. If the lambs were mine, I would give Thee one; but
now I have only this meat; it is my dinner meat. Please, my Father, send
fire down from heaven to burn it. Thou hast said, Whosoever shall say unto
this mountain, Be thou cast into the sea, nothing doubting, it shall be
done. I ask for the sake of Jesus Christ. Amen."

He knelt down with his face upon the ground, and he folded his hands upon
his curls. The fierce sun poured down its heat upon his head and upon his
altar. When he looked up he knew what he should see–the glory of God!
For fear his very heart stood still, his breath came heavily; he was half
suffocated. He dared not look up. Then at last he raised himself. Above
him was the quiet blue sky, about him the red earth; there were the clumps
of silent ewes and his altar–that was all.

He looked up–nothing broke the intense stillness of the blue overhead. He
looked round in astonishment, then he bowed again, and this time longer
than before.

When he raised himself the second time all was unaltered. Only the sun had
melted the fat of the little mutton chop, and it ran down upon the stones.

Then, the third time he bowed himself. When at last he looked up, some
ants had come to the meat on the altar. He stood up and drove them away.
Then he put his hat on his hot curls, and sat in the shade. He clasped his
hands about his knees. He sat to watch what would come to pass. The glory
of the Lord God Almighty! He knew he should see it.

"My dear God is trying me," he said; and he sat there through the fierce
heat of the afternoon. Still he watched and waited when the sun began to
slope, and when it neared the horizon and the sheep began to cast long
shadows across the karoo, he still sat there. He hoped when the first rays
touched the hills till the sun dipped behind them and was gone. Then he
called his ewes together, and broke down the altar, and threw the meat far,
far away into the field.

He walked home behind his flock. His heart was heavy. He reasoned so:
"God cannot lie. I had faith. No fire came. I am like Cain–I am not
His. He will not hear my prayer. God hates me."

The boy's heart was heavy. When he reached the kraal gate the two girls
met him.

"Come," said the yellow-haired Em, "let us play coop." There is still time
before it gets quite dark. You, Waldo, go and hide on the kopje; Lyndall
and I will shut eyes here, and we will not look."

The girls hid their faces in the stone wall of the sheep-kraal, and the boy
clambered half way up the kopje. He crouched down between two stones and
gave the call. Just then the milk-herd came walking out of the cow-kraal
with two pails. He was an ill-looking Kaffer.

"Ah!" thought the boy, "perhaps he will die tonight, and go to hell! I
must pray for him, I must pray!"

Then he thought–"Where am I going to?" and he prayed desperately.

"Ah! this is not right at all," little Em said, peeping between the stones,
and finding him in a very curious posture. "What are you doing Waldo? It
is not the play, you know. You should run out when we come to the white
stone. Ah, you do not play nicely."

"I–I will play nicely now," said the boy, coming out and standing
sheepishly before them; "I–I only forgot; I will play now."

"He has been to sleep," said freckled Em.

"No," said beautiful little Lyndall, looking curiously at him: "he has
been crying."

She never made a mistake.

...

The Confession.

One night, two years after, the boy sat alone on the kopje. He had crept
softly from his father's room and come there. He often did, because, when
he prayed or cried aloud, his father might awake and hear him; and none
knew his great sorrow, and none knew his grief, but he himself, and he
buried them deep in his heart.

He turned up the brim of his great hat and looked at the moon, but most at
the leaves of the prickly pear that grew just before him. They glinted,
and glinted, and glinted, just like his own heart–cold, so hard, and very
wicked. His physical heart had pain also; it seemed full of little bits of
glass, that hurt. He had sat there for half an hour, and he dared not go
back to the close house.

He felt horribly lonely. There was not one thing so wicked as he in all
the world, and he knew it. He folded his arms and began to cry–not aloud;
he sobbed without making any sound, and his tears left scorched marks where
they fell. He could not pray; he had prayed night and day for so many
months; and tonight he could not pray. When he left off crying, he held
his aching head with his brown hands. If one might have gone up to him and
touched him kindly; poor, ugly little thing! Perhaps his heart was almost
broken.

With his swollen eyes he sat there on a flat stone at the very top of the
kopje; and the tree, with every one of its wicked leaves, blinked, and
blinked, and blinked at him. Presently he began to cry again, and then
stopped his crying to look at it. He was quiet for a long while, then he
knelt up slowly and bent forward. There was a secret he had carried in his
heart for a year. He had not dared to look at it; he had not whispered it
to himself, but for a year he had carried it. "I hate God!" he said. The
wind took the words and ran away with them, among the stones, and through
the leaves of the prickly pear. He thought it died away half down the
kopje. He had told it now!

"I love Jesus Christ, but I hate God."

The wind carried away that sound as it had done the first. Then he got up
and buttoned his old coat about him. He knew he was certainly lost now; he
did not care. If half the world were to be lost, why not he too? He would
not pray for mercy any more. Better so–better to know certainly. It was
ended now. Better so.

He began scrambling down the sides of the kopje to go home.

Better so! But oh, the loneliness, the agonized pain! for that night, and
for nights on nights to come! The anguish that sleeps all day on the heart
like a heavy worm, and wakes up at night to feed!

There are some of us who in after years say to Fate, "Now deal us your
hardest blow, give us what you will; but let us never again suffer as we
suffered when we were children."

The barb in the arrow of childhood's suffering is this: its intense
loneliness, its intense agony.